Early
in the 20th Century, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, a pioneer in the use of
photography as a medium of fine art, wrote,

“It seems to
me indispensable, that we, the creators of our own time, should go to work
with up-to-date means.”

Today
— early in the 21st Century — photography is in revolution as the first
major change in process in nearly 100 years is taking form. That process,
involving digital capture and presentation, though still embyonic, has opened doors for expression
only dreamed of by photographers not trapped in some scholastic approach
that narrowly defines the limits of a medium usually based on the aesthetics
and skill sets of the founders of that approach. The photographers
doing that had a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants, but could not
get out of their shadows to do so.

Beautiful as silver-based emulsion can be, it is, for me, aesthetically
narrow in its range of applications. But ink on paper is an application
that has had hundreds of years of creative exploration. And that knowledge of
controlling how a particular ink type interacts with a particular paper type
to render color and line from soft and subdued to fine and rich can now be
combined with the psycho-sociological power of the optically based image and
the aesthetic power of a level of finite control over the tiniest parts of
that image heretofore available only to painters and printmakers. For
example, a single leaf in a forest can be enhanced if it contains the soul
of the image and is critical to the visual story; that is extremely
difficult in the darkroom.

And,
more challenging still, our exploration of these new possibilities is but
starting out from the trail head. It carries with it a complete paradigm shift for artists and
photographers and, as in all fields when such a cataclysmic event happens,
some embrace it and some are terrified of it. But none can ignore it for
long.

The
natural world, the general subject of my non-commercial photography, is, to
me, made up of its infinite variety of details. Fractal geometry has shown
us that the same basic elements can be arranged in endless ways to create
completely different views of the world. String theory tells us that the
collection of possible worlds is nearly limitless as well. I am fascinated
by both the details themselves and the larger world(s) they create. Of late
I have used those various elements to explore detail in ways ranging from a
nearly traditional approach to those natural details involving shooting closely
and isolating the intended subject, to the use of digital techniques to
allow me to shoot at resolutions far exceeding the potential of the human
eye and then present a large view but in which those small details can now
be seen along with the results of the aesthetic alchemy that brings them
together in so many ways.

To me, the world is truly
a magical place. Everywhere I look there are visual mysteries, wondrous
stories, exalting vistas, exquisite design, and puzzling details. The
immensity of that visual feast is such that to try to shoehorn all of what I
see and feel into one narrow scholastic approach or another is not only
impossible, it expresses a profound disrespect for the subjects themselves.

I am divinely indifferent
to trying to portray just what I “see” and chose, rather, to try to bring
any and all of my tools to bear on the attempt to portray what I “feel” when
I find my spirit resonating with a subject. Sometimes that feeling is
serene, sometimes frenetic, sometimes it demands of me a “straight”
rendition, sometimes it asks me to explore its core essence abstracted from
its banal surface reality. Sometimes it even demands that I allow it to
jump off the page at the viewer as it jumped out of its background for me.
Perhaps another way of phrasing this is that even if my subject is a rock, I
try to take it's portrait and bring out its character and soul.
For me, the goal is to make visible for the viewer things that would
otherwise be unseen by them. But I also want them to have to work a
little at it so they too succeed on a voyage of discovery.

If I did not allow the
subject to converse with me and suggest to me the best ways to present
itself to the viewer then, in my opinion, I should turn in my artist’s
badge. I refuse to let the mechanical restraints of what is no more than a
tool to me—the camera—define the limits of my vision or of the world of my
subjects. My camera is not an artist; it is a simple light-gathering
device. My computer, similarly, is not an artist; it is a not-so-simple
pixel-editing device. Nor is the darkroom an artist, it is no more than a
location containing chemical compounds and some projection equipment in
which art has the potential of being made. If, therefore, I am to be true
to my subjects and to my feelings about them, I must work on attaining the
range of skills and tools required to produce an image in any form those
feelings might indicate, even if they take me outside of my comfort zone and
even outside my current skill level or even into another medium. If, for
example, my mind conjures up an image that should be done in bronze then, if
I want to be called an artist, I should be willing and able to learn what it
would take to render my vision into that proper medium and bring it to life
for the viewer.

In my
photography I have completely embraced the digital world because, for me, it
opened up so many more creative options and allows for the freedom—and
terror—to explore image creation in ways more traditional artists have done
for centuries. The visual effect of various types and flows of ink on
various types and porosities of paper, for example, is no longer the sole
realm of the watercolorist or printmaker. This and other options are
finally opening up to photographers and I am thrilled, excited, intimidated,
and enthralled by it.

And
for those traditionalists who decry the digital arena because it can produce images
that, in their opinions, are not the product of a darkroom (as if that
imposed "art" into the result by some inexplicable method), I would suggest
one name: Jerry Uelsman. The truth is that there are very few things
than can be done in a digital photo editing environment such as Photoshop(tm)
that could not have been done in the darkroom if, and it is a HUGE "If," the
artist had mastered sufficient skill and vision. There is nothing
inherently artistic about ANY medium or mode of expression, they are simply
tools standing ready to be used by expert and nimrod alike. It is so
wearisome to hear people who ought to know better assert that one scholastic
approach is "THE" proper expression of art and others are not. A Black and White
image does not inherently contain more 'soul' than a color one: try selling
that line to an oil painter. The "art," if there is to be any, lies
only in the final product - the image; and the means by which it was
attained are utterly irrelevant.